Note to Self

On the mornings when you wake up and feel like you haven’t slept at all…or, wait, maybe that’s not just a feeling, but a reality…and the last thing you want to do is head downstairs to start that infernal pot of oat bran…and when instead of a sweet sleepy morning smile you are greeted with a whine…and when all of your attempts to snap little hearts out of grumpiness and into gladness are met with an epic FAIL…on those mornings…His grace is sufficient for you.

On the days when you feel like you can’t catch your breath…and when your sweet, precious girl asks “Why?” for the two hundred millionth time, and you just start humming loudly so you don’t have to answer…again…and when naptime is a joke and consequently, the emotional breakdowns start at 4:00 in the afternoon and you are wondering how you are going to make it until bedtime…and when you start to lose your patience, or are caught off-guard by the words and the tone coming out of your mouth, and you realize that you are no better than your two year old…on those days…His strength is perfected in your weakness.

On the nights when the going-to-bed routine stretches out for two hours and your screaming children take turns waking one another with their outrageous drama…and then you come downstairs and see your counters full of dirty dishes and scraps of vegetable peels and okay, maybe a few unidentified substances…and your floor is full of halfway-packed moving boxes and you can’t even walk through the room without tripping…and then after five minutes of relative peace the baby starts crying again, and you head upstairs and just hover in front of the door, praying that she would please stop crying and go to sleep so that you can just sit on the couch and stare at the wall and listen to the silence…and in the moment when you say, “I can’t do this anymore” and  you have lost all perspective…especially in that moment…draw near to the throne of grace with confidence and find grace to help in time of need.

And in the sweetest moments…the unprompted hugs and declarations of “I love you Mommy”…when you spin around the room with your girls or pause on the couch for a good book together…when you share an inside joke or have a little helper in the kitchen…and when you go to pick up your girls from anywhere and are greeted with the biggest, brightest smiles when they see you…and in those blessed moments when you are able to have deeper conversations than you thought possible, and you witness the Holy Spirit’s powerful work in the heart of a preschooler, and when you have eyes to see the slow awakening of faith and the soil of your child’s heart becoming softer and more fertile…in those moments…rejoice because His grace is still sufficient…rest in that grace because His power is still made perfect in your weakness…fall on your knees in gratitude before the throne of grace…because it was never about you at all…